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And just when you thought this topic already got discussed so many times that nobody wants to hear about it anymore the internet soldiers of hate-posting arise yet again to write their bloody fingers off…

“Whaddaya talkin about?!”

Simply put: Pagan music groups like Omnia wearing leather and fur.

To put things straight: I’m not siding with Omnia and bands like them because I don’t know them personally.

But here’s the thing.

I consider myself a nature-loving, animal-rescuing, flowers-for-bees-planting, peace loving, sports-hunter-hating person. I rescued tons of birds and all of my cats came from problemtatic circumstances, abusive owners or animal shelters. I support local farmers and buy milk and vegetables preferably directly from them instead of multi-million-€-companies. I’m not perfect in what I do because sometimes I do indeed go to the supermarket but I am in no competition to be morally more right than others. And although my lifestyle’s very down to earth, muddy, crafty and more often than not grubby (because that happens when you have two cat boys and try to make a living by working with your hands) and I try to combine what I do with eco-friendlyness with sticking to materials I feel good about using them. But still I do use and own fur and leather.

How can that be?

First of all: I’m no friend of artificial shit. I mean I do have plastic stuff. It’s what I write this text on, some of my tools consist of it, some of my food comes wrapped in it but I openly boycott stores which wrap every single bell pepper in its own little plastic mantle (because seriously…I know they argument that vegetables harvested under eco-friendly circumstances should not come in contact with normal ones due to contamination issues but in no way is wrapping everything and their mother in plastic the right countermeasurement. At least in my opinion…). I dare say if more people came down to my amount of waste production there’d be a lot less waste. I don’t go to fast food chains, most of my clothes are second hand (if not third- or fourth hand. I mean I wear stuff my late grandma wore 40-50 years ago), my towels and dishcloths belonged to my family for 10-20 years (and with proper care and the right materials they can easily live this long) and even my cleaning cloths were undershirts once. It’s not because we were poor as fuck, it’s because we are like that. I inherited the complete tool collection of my father which is 30-40 years old and except for motors that got a bit weak over time this stuff is perfectly fine (honestly, how can a hammer not be fine? Or nails, or pliers, or saws… 😉 ).

Second: I don’t think nature owes me one because I live kinda eco-friendly. The fur I own came from animals that were cared for and loved by their owners, and then died. Some got attacked by wolves, some were eaten by humans, some just died of old age. That happens when you live far away from the cities, where hungry beasts lurk behind your fences and although you have the largest dogs they might not always be able to protect the herd. And you gotta live. And eat. And while people in the cities are able to just jump into the next grocery store with a wide arrangement of tofu and soy products present in the shelves some people can’t.

Third: Comparing your own to other peoples circumstances is a tricky thing. While I’m often able to get my hands on bones and stuff because I’m quite attentive other people maybe can’t pull that off. I keep the bones of our meals for example, collect feathers from the ground while strolling along somewhere, people sometimes just give me things like pinecones, old jewelry and stuff. And because all this is highly individual I could never judge people who are not living and working like me. Which doesn’t mean that everyone else has the right to littler around or loot the whole forest just because they don’t live like me. But most of the times the circumstances are different for people. Which means some can be strictly vegan, some can’t. Some can give shelter to animals, some can’t. Some can get their hands on ethically sourced leather, some can’t. Some can make up their minds and work with materials which once belonged to a living being, some can’t. Just because you can do something it doesn’t mean anyone else can, too.

Fourth: Less is more. There’s stuff made from leather that’s really useful. Like leather pants when it’s cold outside, or a leather coat to keep you warm and the rain from your clothes. I own exactly one pair of leather pants for 17 years now. They’re still great, like on their first day. The same goes for my coat, 10 years old, also still great. On the other hand I owned at least 4-5 plastic pants looking like leather, all just tore apart after four to six months because the softener just disappeared and the seams just made these whole things even more brittle. I can’t help but thinking that it’s better to own something sturdy which was handmade by a craftsman than to buy the same shit over and over again made from plastic that may or may not ooze some stuff nobody can pronounce right away.

Fifth: When I collect the bones and feathers of other people’s (or animal’s 😉 ) meals I’m literally collecting trash. The spine I’ve made a necklace from was on its way to the garbage can before I grabbed and cleaned it. The problem is that feathers, teeth and bones often come from sources I’d highly suspect of taking stuff by really violent force. I know of regions in the world where they do insane things to animals in order to get their “wolf fangs” for your necklace. You have to do your research. And even if you did, it doesn’t prevent people from lying to your face. Nevertheless I like to trade stuff and money for things other people don’t need. One man’s trash is one girl’s treasure.

This list could go on, I could ramble about a lot of topics related to using animal parts in art, craft and for magic purposes. But I think these points are enough to make one thing clear:

All this shit is hella complicated. It’s hard as fuck to make a living with anything. It always was. And by claiming bands like Omnia follow some sort of double standard because they use fur and leather you just make very clear that you haven’t informed yourself enough. Sure it’s important to raise awareness amongst people that leather is likely a product of agony considering the circumstances animals are mostly kept. But don’t go spreading your message in a way that sane people who don’t have the knowledge you have get repelled by you. Don’t go around attacking people because if you do they will not follow you but go into the opposite direction. Not only that. Their friends will follow them too. And soon your good intentions will become corrupted and regarded as ill.

I don’t expect anyone to agree with me. And my bitchy ass doesn’t tolerate any hate, spam or plain trolling on my blog. I just felt like I could make this statement to clearify that nothing’s only black and white or good and evil. And maybe someone might read this and stops feeling guilty about not being perfect. Just do the best you can.

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While the melodie is well-known from their song “Fee Ra Huri” from the album “Musick and Poëtree” (with parts from “Richard Parker’s Fancy” – Album: Alive; “Saltatio Vita – Album: WolfLove; “Kokopelli” – Album: Earth Warrior) I find this new interpretation really refreshing and look at this gorgeous video, guys! That’s some serious fire-flinging if I ever saw one 😀

While some people criticized that the band recycled this song from old ones I don’t mind it because they gave these songs a new music video whith that, while making a new music video for songs that are several years old doesn’t make too much sense since they also want to promote their work with this eye-candy.

Have a nice day, guys!

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Don’t get me wrong – I’m no expert in divination and I probably never will be. But when I got started in working with tarot cards I would have loved to read about other people’s experiences without them going on rambling about complicated patterns and the moon phases they required to perform their readings. Because that’s not how tarot works for me, although I’m fully aware that it works like that for them 😉

My approach at divination is what others would describe as down to earth. I don’t do readings for other people except for really really² close friends and I don’t do it for money because I need a certain connection to the cards, the topic and the person and it’s very problem solving oriented. And with money on my mind beforehand I just can’t concentrate that well.

Finally we got this disclaimer out of the way 😀

I bought my first tarot set at the age of probably 16-17 which was a Rider Waite Tarot and it didn’t talk to me at all, it still doesn’t. Maybe the art style doesn’t fit me, maybe it’s something else but when I first got my hands on this set I just expected something to click which didn’t happen. And that was a tad bit disappointing. At that time I didn’t realize why and I thought that maybe it’s all humbug and people are just crazy.

Some years went by and it was at the dawn of Amazon when I stumbled across another tarot set, which somehow caught my attention. It was celtic themed and the pictures looked interesting, so I gave it another go, thinking if it didn’t work again I could just use the cards for some art. When my package arrived I first read the instructional book which was quite thick, and again I stumbled across these patterns you should structure your cards in on the table. Everything more complicated than past – present – future was not my cup of tea at that time and I thought maybe the patterns don’t matter that much when I approached every card I drew with a certain question in the first place. So I threw the convoluted rules I had read about online and in books overboard and started to concentrate on the cards themselves.

And that was when I learned why the Rider Waite deck didn’t work for me. The cards were just too plain. Lo and behold my eyes need a lot of stuff to view and to get lost in. They need leafy or cloudy patterns, twigs, little mushrooms, squirrels, reflections, tiny details to discover. Then and only then I could focus on working with the cards, let all the symbols flow into my mind.

The first moral of this story is that the wide range of divination techniques is just a catalogue of proposals, and so are all the tools. And the second one is that it is completely fine to go astray from a well established path if it works better for you.

Have a nice day guys! 🙂

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Yay! It’s my birthday next month so I decided I want to learn something new and treat me with a beautiful gift aswell (which kind of fits in like a crystal ball :D)! I ordered my first acrylic contact juggling ball.

Contact juggling is an art I loved ever since I saw Kelvin Kalvus perform the first time!

Basically it’s balancing acrylic balls and letting them roll and glide all over your arms and torso, performing little tricks. Maybe I’m talented enough to show that off, or maybe not and I’m just gonna pratice for myself, I don’t care as long as I have fun with it 😀

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As you might imagine I love Blackmore’s Night 😀 And when I began getting more into witchcraft, folk tales and all sorts of magical stuff they were very influencial on me. Especially Candice Night’s voice caught me instantly and look at her beauty! She’s marvellous! 🙂

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Of course I ended up getting Skyrim and while browsing through my massive pile of shame I thought I could do a little bit of streaming later this spring. I can’t say at which definitive point because I’m always a bit too busy. But it’s definitely gonna happen and I’ll try to focus on viking/fantasy games only, although I cannot promise to avoid the occasional round of Overwatch every now and then 😉

While I would love to I don’t know how to do some creative streams with my setup.

As software I’m going to use OBS because I know this best from my screen-capturing adventures doing some german let’s plays and therefore I hope I’ll be able to make some nice overlays! 😀

How awesome would it be to make some cool fanart on stream or to team up with someone (whom I already have in mind ^^) for some multiplayer fun?! Exactly!

But until then there are tons of stuff to do, pendants to make, necklaces to assemble, so I think it’s probably going to be late april or may. I might even put some (pagan and fantasy-related!) gaming stuff on my YouTube channel. But that’s a whole other story 😉

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The last weeks I felt the urge to buy a new game: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

But here’s the thing: I already got some games I love to play and I’ve always a lot of stuff to do, a lot of things to catch up to and so I’m quite busy, but on the other hand I’d love to get in touch with the story. It’s an old game but they have loads of patches enhancing the graphics, but this, but that, but then again 😀

I’m sure some of you may know this kind of silly struggle 😉

Nevertheless, the whole Elder Scrolls thing is something I’d love to dive into in the near future, especially since there are loads of awesome weapons, armors and general cotume ideas to find!

Until I can make my decision I’m probably gonna listen to the soundtrack for some time and doodle on my face a bit because it’s about time to create some new facepaint pics… and maybe I can do something Skyrim inspired… hm!

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That’s a crazy one! Being a sibling of two cats myself some good amounts of cat hair try to pile up in my home, especially with my boy Loki being a norwegian forest cat. I think the author of this video had a similar problem and came up with a rather extraordinary solution: A knife handle made from cat hair (and epoxy of course).

😀

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Joiking (or “yoiking”) is a form of singing, sung by the Sami people from the nordic countries. Technically it’s related to yodeling and a joik is used to evoke or portray certain places, people or animals. Researchers believe it’s the oldest music tradition of Europe that’s still being carried on.

While being associated with pre-christian shamans and rituals this technique was considered sinful during the era of christianisation, which lead to a devolution of the tradition. But nevertheless, this tradition lives on because it’s so deeply rooted within the culture of the Sami, with a joik being especially made for a person when he or she is born.

To understand it better, they say that you “joik a person” and not “about a person”, which comes quite close to evoking and conjuring. And in the case above, the singer Jon Henrik Fjällgren joiks his late friend Daniel.

It’s not so much about the words, more about the feelings and the melody you can create by joiking, which I find an amazing way to bridge language gaps 🙂

Hope you enjoyed this little cultural trip and you all have a great day 🙂

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You take one big onion, cut it into pieces and throw it into a pot with some butter or oil, salt and pepper. While it’s heating up you take a celery root, peel it, cut it into pieces and throw it into the pot, too. The same goes for parsley root, four carrots and leek. You’ll need a bit more salt than you would expect but you can always taste what you do. So you’ll boil everything down until it’s an almost unrecognisable mass. It’s ok, I promise.
For the next steps it depends on what you’re wanting to do. A thick stew needs beans and potatoes or pearl barley. Soups need noodles or rice, or also potatoes but less. Once decided, you’ll estimate how much water you’re going to add. When you’re a bit afraid you can add it sip by sip. Don’t forget to taste your work! If you’re one modern person you can use one of these wand blenders but you don’t have to. The soup will just turn out fine. When you got your broth done you can also add more green vegetables to it. And of course you could add mettwurst, beef shank or whatever you might like. And if you don’t just keep it that way.

You may have noticed there are no additional seasonings because you don’t need them. Just add all the herbs you like and be aware that you might need more because your tongue is still used to taste some artificial stuff 😉

Since spring is coming and with it the new medieval market season I’m very excited to try these shadows out. This year I want to up my make up game a bit and try some more exaggerated looks both for photos and on markets, and maybe I can review some stuff or make a tutorial or two, who knows 😀 This youtube account of mine waits to be filled with stuff!

By only touching these baked shadows they give off a good amount of color. I think I’ll be able to vary the intensity by using either a brush or an applicator sponge while packing on the color, and maybe also by wetting the brush, which is also recommended when using baked eyeshadows.

The colors probably aren’t for everyone’s every day use due to their shimmery complexion, but on the plus side they’re allergy tested and cruelty-free, and I love to see that in my make-up case 😀

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People who inspire me come from all sorts of places. I thought I might introduce them to you because maybe you get some inspirational kick out of their creations like me 🙂

The first of them is Kandee Johnson. She’s a make up artist on youtube, famous for her transformations into all sorts of people, existing and fictional, like

Edward Scissorhands

Anyone who knows me for five minutes probably notices that I’m a huge make up / sfx-make up nerd. I love everything that makes you pretty, ugly, scary, creepy, magical, mossy… One of my new year’s resolution for 2018 is to get more into makeup artistry by the way ❤ and I’ve been like this for almost 20 years. When I stumbled over Kandee’s youtube account I absorbed everything she did in her videos, learned about the products and where to get cheaper alternatives because who can afford everything MAC when you’re at school right? 😀

What strikes me the most is her positivity and her bubbly personality, but also her skills and her eye for how to transform what you have into what you want to have, not only on the canvas which is her face but also in her life.

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These beautiful feather earrings are now available in my shop!
Just click on the pic or the following linknk at the end of the article 🙂

Did I already mention I love working with bronze clay? Because this is what you can make of it! 😀

Feathers are connected to the element of air, and if you ever saw one floating through the air you’re gonna know why: They are so light and delicate!

But instead of being considered as weak they are often regarded as a symbol of power. Take a look at the amazin feather headdresses of native american peoplee for example!

The german language aswell as the english language know a saying stating “to adorn onesself with borrowed plumes” / “sich mit fremden Federn schmücken”, the french language has “se parer des plumes de paon” (transl. “to adorn onesself with peacock feathers”), giving feathers the status of something you’d need to earn or grow for yourself instead of simply picking them up from the ground or plucking them out from a bird.

In ancient egypt the feather was equivalent to the truth. After death a person’s soul would be weighed and compared to the feather of Maat, the goddess of justice and truth. Sins would have made your soul quite heavy in these days.

Not to forget about mother Hulda / Frau Holle. She shakes out her pillows and feathers float down to earth in the form of snow flakes. Her fairytale is about justice and teaching you to be hardworking and helpful.

I was asked if I could do the Hand of the King and I did 😀 Well it’s not done yet but I’m a bit further than what you can see in the picture above. The blade is thicker and I started to shape it into a triangular form, the decoration of the sleeve is more carved out by now and the veiny structure on the back of the hand got carved out a bit more. I still need to add the swirly pattern and the ridges and creases on the outer side of the ring and then fire it in my kiln!

In the beginning I made a silicon mold to get the rough shape of the original brooch and to spare me from shaping a perfect circle 😛 After the the mold was cured I put some release agent and a good portion of Prometheus White Bronze Clay into it and let it sit for some minutes to dry to make it easier to remove the piece from the mold. And right now the soon-to-be-brooch sits on my table drying. You put water on a bronze clay piece to make it shapeable and let it dry when you are done with a certain area to prevent any deformation when working on another area.

Before finally firing the brooch I decided I should make a little pendant or a ring as a test just to make sure the kiln, the coal and the temperature are just right. Boy am I excited 😀 That’s exactly what I want to do with my stuff 🙂

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I have several wigs and I love them, as you might imagine. They enable me to change my type instantly and without the need of going to a hairdresser or putting chemicals on my head or even cutting large chunks off of me 😀

I have the following in my collection:

plus several hair pieces and I definitely plan on expanding it 😀

My next wig project is getting my fake dread locks battle ready. I don’t want to braid them in because I just don’t want to wear these dreads every day and I fear installing them permanently could damage my own hair and cause too much wear on the dreads. So what I came up with, at least for the lower part of my head is this:

I think we all know these clips you fasten clip-in extensions with. I plan on sewing my dreads onto them in order to make them quickly removable. I have a plan on how to cover the top of my head too but it’s not too perfect yet. But I’d love to have a head full of fake-dreads and feathers and beads for a very shamanic outfit I’m dreaming of.

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One can carve them, one can sing them, one can write them, one can tattoo them, one can use them as a writing system, one can try and predict the future with them.

I prefer them for blessing and protection purpose, others put them in elaborate patterns to see what is yet to come.

Their origin is a fascinating one. The god Odin hung himself into a tree and the runes appeared to him in his mind, which is a very shamanistic experience if you ask me, especially considering that the norse gods are actually able to physically die.

What makes the runes so special is also the fact that they not only have a phonetic value but also a meaning, with “Uruz” 𐌿 for example being pronounced as “u” but also meaning “rain” (Icelandic) and of course “aurochs” (Old English).

The runeset above was made a few days ago with my new pyrography tool. This technique feels new and old at the same time, I like to compare it with heating up a knife over a fire and pressing it into wooden disks. Which is certainly something our ancestors were capable of 😉

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As most of you might already know, at least when you follow my Instagram, I like to dress up in the craziest ways. It officially started when I decided over 15 years ago it’d be awesome to go on medieval markets and actually look like I belonged. At that time I owned two long skirts and two blouses and that was it. And somewhen along the way I simply grabbed new costume parts whenever I stumbled across them.

I got quite creative when it comes to acquiring new costume parts. For example I like to crawl through ebay and search for dresses, tops and pants that I can modify or even leave them as they are when they look awesome. Second hand clothes are a great way to save money and re-purpose things that are still perfectly fine. Apart from ebay I frequently visit flea markets, Facebook groups and stores. And since I oftentimes dress crazily even without going to a festival or market, so these clothes ain’t no dead capital 😀
Btw who would have thought that collecting swords and all sorts of decorative weapons would pay someday 😉

The next thing I do is making stuff myself. I sit on a pile of leather pieces and am able to crochet, sew and glue all sorts of stuff together. Whenever there’s an opportunity I grab things one can add to normal pieces of clothing like faux fur trim or sequins and beads, even textile colors, buttons, wool, you name it. In case I need something specific there’s always Amazon or my preferred arts ‘n craft store where I can order stuff or get the right kind of glue in case I need a specific one.

Dollar stores are a great thing too. They often sell weird stuff like fur cuffs, decorative stones, beads, buttons, and all sorts of thingamabobs that are potential props.

My dad handed me down a huge collection of tools which always come in handy when crafting. But I always keep my eyes peeled for new stuff and plan ahead what I might need. After getting my kiln and some rotary tools, engraving tools and such I definitely still want an airbrush, a hot air gun, a torch and some other glass bead making tools… the wishlist always expands, the more shit I buy I suppose 😀

A great aide is my tailor’s dummy on which costumes can be arranged. It’s not exactly my size but it really comes in handy while draping things over other things. Never underestimate the power of sticky velcro by the way ^^

With the internet at hand the possibilities are almost unlimited, even if your budget is. When you have loads of friends working in differend fields it’s very likely they can supply you with material for cheap or even free. And in return you maybe can do something for them.

I’ll be glad to answer to your comments down in the comment section in case you have questions or tips’n tricks or want to show off some of your work!

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In case you’re addicted to any viking related social media page like I am you’ve certainly come across these beautiful beads people use to adorn their beards and manes with. And since I got a bit obsessed with them I decided they’d be a perfect addition for my etsy shop. So in case you might want to own one (or two, or three :D) for yourself you can follow the link below or click on the image above to directly get to my shop and grab your runic bead 🙂

That title sounds somewhat egyptian, but nevertheless, it’s set in a northern kingdom which is not further defined. In the beginning the protagonist is Horus (“Hols”) is fighting a pack of silver wolves, accidentally waking up a stone giant named Mogue (or Rockoar, depending on which version of the movie you’re watching). He pulls a splinter from the giant’s shoulder which, lo and behold, turns out to be a rusty old sword, which in case of being re-forged will not only return to its old glory of being the Sword of the Sun, but also will the giant return to Horus who will in turn be called Prince of the Sun.

Horus’ father confesses on his deathbed that their family came from a northern seaside village that had been destroyed by an ice devil named Grunwald, leaving Horus’ family being the sole survivors of this slaughter. And of course the father urges Horus to go back to their old village to seek revenge…

The anime is from 1968 and although the animation technique of that time was amazing it’s definitely not like modern day anime with all the waifus and bishis 😉 But in case you know Studio Ghibli, you might find it interesting that this movie was the first major film of Hayao Miazaki, who is well-known for masterpieces like Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle, Grave of the Fireflies and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, to name a few.

There is a UK DVD release of this movie, which you can order on amazon. In fact two versions seem to exist, but I couldn’t make out any difference except from the cover and title:

Huginn and Muninn are the two ravens of Odin. Huginn came from the old norse word “huga” – “to think”, the noun being “hugi” – “Thought, Sense”. Muninn belongs to the old norse verb of “muna” – “thinking of, remembering”. These ravens are said to sit on Odin’s shoulders, telling them everything they see and hear.

These names definitely make sense in the context of ravens. These birds are incredibly intelligent, being able to use tools and conclude how to solve new problems! ❤

If you want to grab a pair of these really sweet little birds just click on the picture above or on the following link to directly get teleported into my etsy store!

The history of the Ulfberht swords is quite interesting, it even got plagiarized with different variants of spelling the name “Ulfberht” which is embossed in the blade. Definitely recommend to watch some documentaries about this!

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Ah the new year has begun and I’m quite busy working, putting together one necklace after the other at the moment and getting way too less sleep 😀 But nevertheless I enjoy what I’m doing, especially because I re-discovered a long lost passion: watching anime.

At the moment I’m watching “The ancient magus’ bride” (魔法使いの嫁 Mahō Tsukai no Yome), a series about a girl who experienced a lot of suffering in her past because she was different. She sells herself into slavery and gets bought by strange man with a creature’s skull for a head, who is surprisingly nice to her and she becomes his apprentice AND he wants her to be his bride. You can watch the 13 episodes for free on crunchyroll by the way, which I learned to love over the past weeks!

(Click on the image to go directly to crunchyroll.com)

Maybe I can find some norse themed anime, that’d be awesome! In case you know any just drop me a comment below and I’m gonna check them out 🙂

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I do some crafting that has something to do with re-enactment and I definitely like the scientific aspects of my hobbies and my lifestyle so I do come in contact with experimental archaeology and such, but I don’t think I would label myself as a re-enactor.

What I do is, I take historical concepts and approach them with my modern day knowledge of things. Since I speak several languages I can determine origins of words and put them in a historical context and I also love to grab old designs and put them into a new environment, like making imprints of replicas and rework pendants for example into earrings or take patterns and put them onto something new. Re-enactment is preserving old techniques and knowledge. I like to go a step further and combine it with today.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think re-enactment is outdated. Without it I wouldn’t be able to create half of the things I do. It’s just that the concept of not “being allowed” to use modern tools and knowledge is too narrow for me.

Also I do not “act”. Everything you see on my Instagram, Facebook and my blog is me, without acting. I live like this, not for the sake of science or to prove or disprove something. It’s my everyday life. I don’t feel the obligation of displaying how much knowledge I accumulated and which fields I studied in.

There’s a certain trend in the re-enactment scene where everyone tries to be smarter than everyone else, having all the sources ready to be quoted but I don’t engage in this either.

I simply want to be myself, be creative, run around in whatever outfit I deem fit for me and paint my face with eyeliner whenever I desire to. I’m not competing against anyone.

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My silesian great-grandmother brought this recipe with her to germany in the late 1800s, beginning 1900s, where we later called it “polish dumplings”.

Depending on how many people you want to feed you’ll need to adjust the amounts of potatoes.

In general:

1 part uncooked potatoes
1 part cooked potatoes
Flour

The uncooked potatoes go into a blender in order to be put into a dishcloth afterwards. Great-grandma did it with a grater but I want to spare you that 😉 We want to get most of the water out of the mass and you will have to press it with a lot of power.
The cooked potatoes need to be mashed and mixed with the uncooked potato mass.
Put flour on your work surface and form dumplings in the size up to a fist.
Cook for 15-20 minutes in salt water. When the dumplings are ready they’ll come up to the water surface.

Perfect for yule or christmas eve or whatever occasion you see fit for a feast 😉

These dumplings are very rich, but fear not, they’re even better the next day. You can just cut them into pieces and roast them in a pan, together with onions 🙂

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Since I love to stick to family traditions (and expand them to a certain extent) I basically do the same every year. Eating good food, visiting family and friends, sharing gifts and enjoy the winter time. I love to play some funny pagan christmas songs like:

and

which are totally kitschy and cringy but I really don’t care and love them anyway 😀

My traditional food for yule would be a turkey hen with potato dumplings, red cabbage, gravy and some sweet dessert, after a family recipe we follow for longer that I’m alive now. I might share this here in case someone is searching for a new tradition to start 😉 By the way all the vegetarians and vegans can also skip the bird. This meal is enough to fill your belly without eating somebody else.

For me celebration starts at December 21st which is technically solstice and it goes on to the 24th wich is celebrated with family and friends who don’t necessarily happen to be pagan. Present-exchanging goes on, as well as eating too many sweets, listening to music, watching something on TV, talking and laughing, basically very casual, no naked rituals, no blood, no animal sacrifices (except for the turkey hen which doesn’t count since it’s usually dead already when we bring it home 😛 ). I like to keep my spirituality private so there’re no wild public celebrations.

Before yule celebrations start I love to clean the house to get rid of the past year’s junk.

We do have a yule tree which is exactly decorated like a christmas tree, there’re always some little angels hidden within the twigs symbolizing our christian friends.

Depending on how much we have to give ourselves I also like to make little donations to random people or animal shelters.

And when all the hustle and bustle is over and I find some spare time I’ll retreat into a park or forest, spending some time outside in the cold, getting refreshed and preparing for a new year filled with adventures.

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The internet is filled with us people who have fallen victim to bullies either in their childhood, their teens or even as grown-ups. I’m no singular phenomenon although I felt like one back then.

I am aware that probably zero people of my past learned anything else than that you can get away with bullying, no matter what you say. And since I preferred not to beat the living shit out of them I think it’s just natural.

You can have different approaches to cope with childhood bullying after you finally grew up. I learned to embrace my inner weirdo and the honesty with which I’m obviously weird is something that makes me believable as a person.

Somewhere along the path I chose to be me instead of catering to other peoples ideas how I should be to be more likeable. I did not choose to be overweight back then, but I chose to be open about my love of computer games, anime, programming, tv series and my choice of clothes. I chose to cheer up others who got bullied as well, instead of going for the cheap laughs and making fun of them too. And hell did I look aweful with my boyish haircut, my dad’s old leather jacket, plaid pants and skater boy pullovers. But there was nothing else to wear for me and I didn’t care at all. Everyday clothes were (and are still) a tool to prevent freezing for me. But things like that make you an outcast. After leaving elementary school I had already lost hope to find friends and my new school mates sensed that of course.

The first thing they thought appropriate was making fun of my weight, which was disappointing since I had already gone through that for three years, while I didn’t even have a concept in my mind for differently shaped bodys. I did not compare myself with others until then.

In conclusion I must have thought something along the lines of “If what I am is insufferable, with all the unobtrusive hobbies of mine, I could as well be extra and exaggerate.” So I went from overweight and weirdly dressed to overweight, weirdly dressed, tattooed, pierced, lost weight over time, went gothic, dyed my hair orange and became a bit louder. I think in my case I just was the perfect victim at the right spot and the bullying had nothing to do with the actual me being actually unlikeable. People love me for the same old jokes I made over twenty years ago, when I got flamed for them. I still am me.

I remember a really skinny boy in my class being explicitly disturbing, screaming I should die already from the top of his lungs right in my face. It was very obvious that he projected something onto me and that it was his brain actually screaming for some sort of relief. And still kids shouldn’t be confronted with such a severe dysfunctionality.

Later in my life I did go to a class reunion but all I saw was representation, fake smiles, stress, irritation. And amongst all this me, being the hippie girl with feathers in my hair. In another blog I wrote that I chose not to be part of the group and an anonymous person, obviously somebody from my past, claimed that choosing not to be a part of the group might have been my problem all along. I never really responded to that, but here I will:

I’ve had my closure with you guys, I really did. You were part of my way and some of you were more pleasant than others, who chose to be arseholes just because they could. I chose not to, although I could have. There were moments when people annoyed me that much that I just literally flipped their tables over them leaving them shocked that I was able to do that, with the only thing protecting them from a broken nose being my own rational self. After having tried so much, for so long, it’s liberating to realize that there is no obligation to fit in. And it’s even more liberating realizing that the things I got bullied for are actual genuinely positive traits I could help people achieve their lifegoals with. For every single insult you threw at me I’m going to make another person happy. Maybe I went a bit overboard with it when I decided to become this grumpy fairy, posting tons of pictures and articles, accumulating more than 3000 people in total who like what I do. Call it overcompensating if you like. I don’t look into the mirror, seeing doubt and confusion anymore. From the first moment I walked into the class room my place in class was fixed. There was no choice to be made, I did not choose not to belong. It was the circumstances that led to me being the bullet sponge for you and you gladly took the opportunity to come to terms with problems that had nothing to do with me, but with puberty hitting hard. It was dangerous what you did, in many ways. And it still is. But after so much time has passed you lost the ability to harm me, even if you wanted. I have seen things, done things, far bigger than getting bullied at school by a few kids having typical kids issues. So no, you’re wrong. My issue was not that I didn’t want to belong from the start. On the contrary. It was the long sought-after solution.

Disclaimer:

In case you come to the conclusion you made me what I am and that bullying can influence people positively, taking me as an example for your crude theory:

Fuck you. Fuck you in particular, you retarded piece of worthless excrement.

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Well since the 11th season of the x-Files is approaching soon (January 3rd!) I thought I could tackle this topic a bit.

And of course there are UFOs, unidentified flying objects. They are real but not necessaly operated by extraterrestrial beings coming from some million lightyears away. Basically everything you see in the sky you cannot identify is a UFO. But that’s not the question. You want to know if I believe in aliens that visit us, abduct people and cut pieces out of cattle.

The universe is huge. The part of the universe we can see is peanuts compared to the part we cannot see. This part is hidden from us because the light hasn’t traveled to us yet. While we can easily get the impression that light is travelling endlessly quick, the speed of light is limited to about 300 000 km per second. For our brains this is quick enough to make us think we see things instantly, right at the same time as they exist. But every photon that reaches our eyes shows us the past. So if we see a star that is 100 lightyears away from us we see an image that is 100 years old because the light needed 100 years to travel this far, hence the name. That’s a problem.

A civilisation like ours likely looks out into and listens to the universe if there are signals to be caught from other civilisations. And if these signals are to be caught, we will likely get messages from beings that are millions of years old and quite outdated. At least from what we know today how signals travel.

For an alien civilisation to visit us they must have overcome said speed problem. While photons, the particles that light consists of, are able to travel with the speed of light, they’re only able to do so because they have no mass. They weigh nothing. An UFO weighs something, at least from what we understand them to be: Spaceships carrying alien lifeforms or computer operated devices. And as soon as something weighs something it cannot reach the speed of light anymore without needing an endless supply of energy. That’s what this E=m*c² thing is about. By “endless supply of energy” I don’t mean “very much” or “a huge ass amount”, I mean literally endless. The faster an object goes, the heavier it gets. You can easily imagine that by driving against an elephant wit 1, 5 or 200 mph. The faster you go, the stronger the impact on your car will be. Alien lifeforms visiting us must have solved this problem. Obviously we still don’t have. At this moment we’re not even able to bring a person to the moon, although we did once. Yes, we went to the moon once. I don’t care for your physically incorrect youtube-theories you found once during a beer-infused night where a computer generated voice claimed we didn’t.

But I’m quite positive that there are indeed things happening in this universe we don’t know of and they’ll probably make forward time travelling possible, which would be necessary to visit us. A lot of crazy shit already happened, like matter developing from literally nothing but the potential of matter developing. Like the universe said “Let’s say it may be possible a part of an atom spawns here and give it a likelihood of so-and-so percent to actually appear.” That’s how physics work. It’s awkward, I know.

So with the problem of transportation out of the way alien lifeforms may also have a bunch of social problems to solve to be actually able to evolve into a race that’s able to journey to the stars. That’s a thing we didn’t do either. Because let’s face it: We still have wars going on over whose invisible friend has the biggest junk and about who may own the most of a poisonous substance we use to fuel our engines with and we know for sure this substance isn’t making life on earth any better except for those who have it. Not saying we are monkeys in shoes, but… we are.

So the more I thought about this the more I came to the conclusion it gets unlikelier that aliens do visit us all the time, abduct people, appear in the night sky and such things. But here’s the thing:

It’s not impossible. I’m not a fan of these theories claiming the ancient egyptians weren’t remotely able to build the pyramids without extraterrestrial help. That’s merely a concept to sell books with but has nothing to do with reality. We definitely should stop belittling our ancestors like that because this obstructs research more than any government conspiracy usually does. And we should simply stop seeing UFOs in every single depiction of a winged penis. If we substract all the fraud and the overeager claims from the whole mass, we have a lot less of a mess of sightings and incidents left. And if we then substract all aerial phenomena that are explainable, all the secret government weapon testing there’s even less left. And if we then concentrate on these cases that were definitely not explainable by modern day technology we could work things out more efficiently.

I do believe there are all sorts of beings out there, from living slime to humanoids. But I cannot say if either of these voluntarily visited us. It’s okay believing we are not alone these days. Back in my days, before the internet, it wasn’t. You got heavily laughed at for such theories, only to find the things you said in tv documentaries twenty years later. Things change. And I think we’re gonna find out the truth. Or we won’t. 😉

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In January 2017 I had no clue what this year would have in store for me.
Now, at the beginning of December there are 2666 people following me on instagram, compared to 442 at the beginning of the year.
More than 2600 people wanting to partake in my fantastic world of myths and magic. And you guys become more and more each day, honestly I have no idea where you’re actually coming from 😀

But one thing I know for sure: I love my work, making people happy with what you do and create every single day is huge privilege.

For 2018 I promise to you better, bigger and more epic projects, the preparations have already started!

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First of all: I love science. I love it so much that I listen to astrophysic documentaries while trying to sleep. At the age of 12 I had read some books about surgery and bought several encyclopedias about medicine, astronomy, and basically everything that helped me writing my little stories I loved to write. You guessed it right, I’m a huge nerd 😉

So? Do you believe in ghosts?

Absolutely yes. I believe the spirits or souls of the dead can visit us, spend time with us, try to communicate, be assholes, try to scare you shitless, appear out of thin air and move objects.

But how does that go together?

Well! Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?
When I was young, around the age of two or three, I had the feeling some places of my family’s flat were dangerous. Dangerous not like in “there’re knives and fire and poison” but more as in “you need to get past the space in front of the mirror quickly or something will happen”. These spots weren’t specifically spooky or dark, not even decorated with things I hated. It was more like an immanent feeling of “something scary will happen” with nothing obvious ever triggering it at that time. I grew older and at the age of 4 or 5 I got said feeling while lying in bed. Night terrors aren’t that uncommon and don’t necessarily mean there’re ghosts going around, but at that age I never woke my parents up screaming or crying, I just developed some sort of taboo, not wanting to look at certain areas in the room at night, which was very instinct-driven. So I kept my face under the blanket while sleeping in my parents bed. During the day, the dangerous areas changed, it was always making me nervous going into my parents bedroom but I still did it. I was no anxious child, I loved to run around and the only thing I feared was heights. Other than that I was a stuntman, coming home with bloody knees and elbows all the time because going too quick on a scooter was too much fun 😉 I never had this certain feeling outside of our flat. It seemed bound to it, but nothing supernatural happened to me until I reached the age of 6 or 7. After that event happened I felt even more cautious and thought things would get even more stressful for me. I felt restricted. It was the following event that made me feel like that:

One night, while lying in my parents bed again, because that’s what you like as a kid, I woke up and saw the bedroom door slowly getting shoved open. It was a big figure, walking slouched while limping. At first I thought it was my dad because he had had a knee surgery before and walked in a similar manner, but quicker. I watched the figure walking around the bed, going to my dad’s side and sitting down. At that point I realized that the bed didn’t move or squeak like usual. There was no weight when the figure sat and finally lay down. After a few moments I gathered all my courage together and asked “Dad?” into the darkness but nothing happened, he just started snoring after a few moments. This, indeed, scared me shitless because that of which I had been afraid the whole time now had shown itself, I thought. I hadn’t grasped the concept of actual ghosts outside the television and only knew the archetypical funny ones like Casper or ones from black & white movies, which didn’t scare me at all. I really liked movies with zombies, monsters and ghosts which were suitable for children, like the Addams Family or the Munsters. But the things going on outside the TV were definitely different and I didn’t connect TV fantasies and reality with eachother, I never did.

From then on the spook intensified until we moved out. One time tableware in the kitchen clashed in the cupboard, and the most aggressive incident was a loud noise like a pistol shot accompanied with dangling easter decoration spread across the room as if someone pulled on both vases filled with twigs and shot at the same time, plus moving a decorative glass pane with minerals like amethysts and agates so that it started swinging from side to side in the window. By this time, my mother and grandmother had already witnessed strange occurances and this special incident scared us three.

By the time I got 10 – 11 my mother told me the flat had been extra cheap because an old lady had died in it. In the flat next door someone had committed suicide and people also had died in the doctor’s office on our floor. At that time I already had started reading tons of stuff about parapsychology. I had come to the conclusion that nobody knew anything exact, but weird stuff happened which people had no explanation for. We moved flats and the feeling of being afraid receded, but came back once in a while at night. I then tried to switch on the light with the button directly installed next to my bed but the lamp wouldn’t react for some reason, no matter how often I switched the button on. After a while the feeling faded and the light could be switched on again. This happened at least every other week. I had read more books and came across an article, that stated ghosts liked to spook around children, especially girls, who started to hit puberty, which to some extend is the case when you reach the age of 9 or 10. So there I sat, stuck with spook which wouldn’t leave me alone.

On several occasions I had the feeling that “the unexplainable” liked to follow my family. While on vacation my godfather died and the day he died a dinner tray just fell down from the kitchen counter to the floor with nobody ever having touched it. He and my grandmother had been heavily into astrology and while he had studied it in Switzerland he brought my grandma some of his books for her to read while they were younger.

For the sake of readability I’m gonna skip some events but maybe you read of them on my instagram feed.

When I first had a flat of my own I owned a white woolen jacket. I laid it onto my bed to get ready, went under the shower, did some stuff and when I returned the jacket was gone. Vanished into thin air. I looked for it everywhere. Around the bed, in my wardrobe, in every room, in my then-boyfriend’s room but it was gone. I sat down at my computer, started doing some early-internet stuff, turned around after twenty minutes and there it was again, lying on the bed as if nothing happened, which was creepy because I had even flipped the mattress because I was quite sick of such events. Around that time I came to terms with my pagan path a bit and investigated into wicca and witchcraft, but I took everything i read with a grain of salt because of my love of science and I knew esoteric literature was often nothing more than a mere scam. But still I found something useful. One book read, that when you get bothered by a ghost you might want to try insulting it really badly with the worst words you know, suggesting laughing at and taunting it.

So one day I stayed at my parents’ and the strap of one of the blinds started dangling without anybody having touched it. It wasn’t in front of the heater and there was no window open. I saw this movement from the corner of my eye and started swearing at it, and if I can do one thing on this planet it’s swearing like it makes sailors blush. What happened next was a bit unexpected for me but I was pleased with the outcome. The dangling just stopped from one moment to the other. Normally you would have thought why should there be ghosts anyway in the new flat? Did the old lady really follow you? Why should she? But no. Right under my window, before the street had been converted a bit, was the place a window cleaner had died some years ago. I was there with my grandma, walking past the place of accident but changing the side of the street because my grandma didn’t want me to see a dead body at the age of 5 while going to my ballet lessons.

The day my grandma died, a bottle of shampoo or hairspray just fell out of the shelf as if something had pushed it. And when I had a very dark day a couple of days ago, a random net filled with sea shells was pushed out of the shelf above me while sitting motionless at the computer. Pushing things out of shelves seems to be a thing in my family. Funnily these incidents didn’t cause any fear at all.

Of course these incidents are in no way proof that there are actual ghosts going around spooking. But some of the things that happened to us are very unlikely explainable with common laws of physics, even with taking into account things like ball-lightning, mass hallucination and random fluctuations of density exist and cause weird phenomena the everyday person knows jack shit about.

And how do you combine these two now?

I must admit I feel like I got used to it. Noises from the kitchen cause me to shout “Don’t you ever shut up?” instead of triggering fear in me. Stuff vanishing into thin air makes me go “If my shit doesn’t appear within 10 minutes I’m gonna stuff you with sage from behind and light your head on fire like a smudge stick!” instead of panicking. And over the years it got less. So I had more time to think about what happened. I learned things like quantum theories exist and that memories in our brains are stored with the help of electricity, although we don’t know for certain how it works. And I have a certain feeling that ghost phenomena can be connected with energy (the physical energy, not the esoterical one) and matter, which are basically the same at the end. Energy cannot be destroyed and when a body dies, this energy needs to go somewhere. And I like the thought that this sort of energy, which some may call soul, sticks together for a while or for eternity to be reincarnated, with new souls developing and old souls getting annihilated with the energy floating away, probably connecting to other emerging souls at that time. Not that this is a valid theory of mine. It’s definitely not. But I like thinking of things being like that just for my personal enjoyment. Because who doesn’t like their loved ones around them?